In some countries, especially less developed ones, poverty levels are declining, but in the US the trend seems to be the opposite. The middle class is being gutted and descending into survival mode if not poverty, while the top few percent become obscenely rich at their expense.

In any case historical trends are really irrelevant to the discussion, which is about the impact of AI, which threatens to take away almost ALL the jobs (this is what Dario's essay is assuming), which has no historical precedent. Some people like to bring up previous waves of job automation such as the industrial revolution, but the difference there is that automation took some jobs but created others. In the case of AI, AI will also be taking the new jobs that it creates.

If AI takes all the jobs - which is what the people like Dario who are creating it assume will happen - then it seems "UBI" is indeed the logical conclusion (other than those able to make a living working for themself, or via self-sufficiency), but this is not going to be utopia where we are all idle rich practicing our hobbies. What it really means is a welfare state, where formerly proud people capable of supporting themself become dependent on government handouts. What comes to mind is the movie "Soylent Green", not utopia.

I'm not sure how anyone imagines this would actually work. Is there any private enterprise left at all, or are all the means of production (AI datacenters and robotic factories) all controlled by the state. Instead of distributing Soylent Green, the state distributes UBI-scrip, essentially food-stamps, that can be exchanged at state stores for provisions?

Seriously, how could this actually work ?

An alternate future, no more optimistic, at least in the short term, but perhaps more realistic, is that in the fairly near future when unemployment and public pain becomes high enough, we reach a tipping point, and the pitchforks come out. Eventually the government concedes that AI is no more conducive to the public good than nuclear weapons, and heavily regulates it, banning the use of AI to replace jobs. This may sound extreme, but surely not a fraction as extreme at the UBI-based welfare state that Dario Amodei is fantasizing about as the best possible outcome (that is compatible with himself becoming enormously wealthy).